Math Teachers at Play #39

Welcome to the Math Teachers At Play blog carnival — which is not just for math teachers! If you like to learn new things and play around with ideas, you are sure to find something of interest.

Several of these articles were submitted by the bloggers; others were drawn from my overflowing blog reader. Don’t try to skim everything all at once, but take the time to enjoy browsing. Savor a few posts today, and then come back for another helping tomorrow or next week.

John Scammell shows students how to create a Pythagorean spiral on card stock to explore irrational numbers in Radical Number Line.

BASIC ALGEBRA & GEOMETRY

The combined age of a ship and its boiler is 48 years. The ship is twice as old as the boiler was when the ship was half as old as the boiler will be when the boiler is three times as old as the ship was when the ship was three times as old as the boiler. How old is the ship?

William Emeny mixes math with Random Art to give students practice in plotting coordinates in the first quadrant.

Sue VanHattum links to A Free Calculus Text that “uses a radically different organization than the standard course, so I don’t know if I could use it at my school. But I definitely want to read the whole thing now.” For her pre-calc class, she’s found another free resource: RISPs: Rich Starting Points.

MATHEMATICAL PUZZLES

Yeah, I used to think it was just recreational… then I started doin’ it during the week… you know, simple stuff: differentiation, kinematics. Then I got into integration by parts… I started doin’ it every night: path integrals, holomorphic functions. Now I’m on diophantine equations and sinking deeper into transfinite analysis. Don’t let them tell you it’s just recreational.

Just say {}.

David Wetzel says, “Problem solving in math promotes critical thinking and math reasoning skills, as students develop solutions to complex mathematical situations.” He challenges his students to find a knight’s tour in Math Problem Solving Game.

ABOUT TEACHING MATH

One of my undergrad professors was asked what kind of problems would be on the final. His answer: “Just study the old tests. The problems will be the same, just the numbers will be different. But not all the numbers will be different. Pi will be the same. Planck’s constant will be the same… ”

Another professor, when asked how many problems there would be on the final, turned to the student and replied, “I think you will have lots of problems on the final.”

Darren Kuropatwa compiles a slideshow of 24 TED Talks for math teachers in Math @ TED. Mr. H. sorts through the National Academies Press Free PDFs and finds several of interest to math educators. And Pat Ballew provides a great resource for teachers now and (as the dates roll around again) in years to come, with his marvelous On This Day in Math series.

MIGHT BE SPAM

One final entry: 8 Ancient Labyrinths to Quiet Your Mind is a travel advertisement, but at least it’s related to math, and I learned something from it. Do you know the difference between a maze and a labyrinth? It makes sense that if we have two words, there should be some distinction, but I never knew what it was. I wish all ads were this interesting!

VISIT OUR SISTER CARNIVALS

FINAL COMMENTS

And that rounds up this edition of the Math Teachers at Play blog carnival. I hope you enjoyed the ride. The next installment of our carnival will open on July 15 at Math Mama Writes. If you would like to contribute, please use this handy submission form or email Sue directly. (We had trouble with the submission form this month. We hope they’ll get it fixed.) Posts must be relevant to students or teachers of preK-12 mathematics. Old posts are welcome, as long as they haven’t been published in past editions of this carnival.

On the “Mathematician for President” idea, Singapore (where I now live) comes close. Prime minister Lee Hsien Loong “studied mathematics at Trinity College, Cambridge University, where he graduated in 1974 with First Class Honours in Mathematics and a Diploma in Computer Science (with distinction).”

STEM seems to be built into the national gene, which makes it a great place to be a math educator!

You’re both very welcome!
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